Lord of the Libraries (11 page)

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Authors: Mel Odom

Tags: #Fantasy, #S&S

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Juhg answered honestly. “I don’t know.”
“What do you want to ask me?” Craugh asked finally. “Do you want to know
why
I went after
The Book of Time
all those years ago?”
Juhg studied Craugh, striving to see through the wizard’s seeming willingness to try to find a common ground. Craugh, even if he hadn’t been a wizard, would have been a cunning master of artifice. But because he was a wizard, Craugh had even more reason to develop duplicitous skills.
“To begin with,” Juhg said, “yes, I would like to know how you came by
The Book of Time.”
Craugh hesitated, then he turned his green eyes to Juhg. “Let me see your journal.” He held out a hand.
Hesitating, Juhg searched the wizard’s face.
Does he just want to make sure he gets rid of all the evidence of what I’ve learned?
He knew that Craugh was aware he wrote in his journal every day, just as the Grandmagister had trained him to do.
“Please,” Craugh added. His hand shook a little.
Surprised that there was no surliness and no threats, and also—ultimately—no choice if he wanted cooperation, Juhg reached into his rucksack and took out the handmade book. He hesitated only a little before handing it over.
Flipping through the book almost casually, Craugh found the recent pages Juhg had filled. Mostly there were the images. Juhg hadn’t known what to say about the turn of events. He hadn’t yet found words to interpret everything he’d seen and felt.
The wizard smoked calmly. “Well, you’ve definitely stated your case in these. And you’ve gone on to your own style of drawing. Wick has every right to be as proud of you as he is.”
Surprised, Juhg thought he detected a hurt tone in Craugh’s voice. Without another comment, the wizard passed the book back, then sat and smoked for a bit.
“Perhaps,” Craugh said in a thick voice after a few minutes, “this talk is just going to be a waste of time. I think you’re already predisposed in the matter.”
Relief flooded through Juhg. Had Craugh just released him? He started to get up and the wizard made no move or suggestion to stop him. Instead, surprisingly, he stopped himself and sat back down.
Craugh’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Well then.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Juhg said, “I still don’t trust you. I won’t lie to you about that, and even if I did lie I think you would know. But I do want to hear your side of things.”
“Why?”
Juhg thought for a moment. “To be fair?”
Craugh scowled and pulled irritably at his beard. “You’re as bad as Wick. Both of you think the world is a fair place.”
“No,” Juhg said in a cold voice. “I don’t think the world is a fair place. I grew up in a goblinkin gem mine, Craugh. I have learned to think the world will eat you the first day you take your eye off of it.”
“Then we share that view.”
“But I want to be fair,” Juhg went on. He held the wizard’s gaze with difficulty, feeling fear razor up his spine. Instead of swapping hard looks with Craugh, Juhg wanted to run for his life. “The world may not be a fair place, but I want to be a fair person.” His voice caught with the sadness
he’d been feeling and he made himself go on. “I’ve always respected you, Craugh. Maybe I haven’t always liked you or liked the things that you did or liked what you said or how you said your piece, but I always respected you.
“Until today?”
Juhg made no answer.
Emotion flickered in the wizard’s eyes but he quickly walled it away by staring at his next breath of smoke. He held his silence till it grew uncomfortable for them both.
“I am unwilling to simply throw that respect away,” Juhg stated, knowing that the wizard could never bring himself to break the strain between them. “The Grandmagister is the wisest person I know. He believes in you. So, honoring his wisdom, I am forced to believe in you as well.”
“Even after the
monster
knew my name and so many secrets came spilling out?”
“And the way that you killed the woman, Ladamae? Yes, even after that.”
“She had to be killed. She would never have let you go.”
“You freed me.”
“She would have taken you again, and then she would have killed you. Or she would have run amuck among the dwarves here on this ship. I couldn’t very well have that, now could I?”
“If that was going to be the case, no.”
Craugh hitched himself up and resettled. “Despite your … honorable intentions, apprentice, once you hear me out you may distrust me even more than you wish to honor your mentor’s belief in me.”
“I can bear it,” Juhg said, “if you can.”
“All right then. But I’m going to have to ask you some questions as well.”
Juhg waited.
“Do you remember what you told me about the disagreement you never bothered to have with Wick that led you to leave the Vault of All Known Knowledge?”
The memory stung Juhg and made him feel guilty. Is that the tack the
wizard is going to take? That we have both let the Grandmagister down?
He centered himself and denied the guilt. “Yes, of course I do.”
“You left,
twice,
and you never once told Wick why.”
“It was no use. He would never have understood. I thought the time had come for the books to be handed back into the world. The Library was supposed to keep them until the threat posed by the goblinkin was over. That threat is over. As over as it’s going to be until the humans, dwarves, elves—and even dwellers—learn to unite again. And the only way they’re going to do that is to communicate again.
Through books.
Crossing the distance involved in a quick fashion and talking face-to-face is out of the question. It’s going to take common knowledge and a lot of years. They will all have to see that we have dreams in common. The Grandmagister wouldn’t have seen it that wary.” Juhg had told Craugh that shortly after the Library had been destroyed.
Craugh nodded. “Wick wouldn’t have. I told you that you were right about that. He loved the Library too much. He persists in loving the Library despite its destruction. But you still could have told him the truth. He could have known why you were leaving. Again.”
“Like you told him the truth about
The Book of Time?”
Juhg asked.
Craugh leaned back against the railing and stared up at the sky. “When I was very young, an impossibly long time ago as I sit here and think of that period now, I wanted power.” He stopped and shook his head. “No, that’s not right. I
craved
power. I lived for it, and I killed for it.” He flicked his green eyes to Juhg for just a moment and gave him a sad smile. “I was not overly concerned about others. Or what their dreams were. If I could scare them or beat them, or, failing either of those, kill them, they didn’t matter. I guess you could say I was not a very good person. Perhaps even evil, if you want. But I was young and I was powerful. That is a very heady mix.” He tamped his pipe bowl down and his voice softened. “And there was a girl. A very, very beautiful girl.”
“Ladamae,” Juhg said before he could stop himself. Still, he wanted all the facts and he wanted them right.
“Yes,” Craugh agreed. “Ladamae. But she wasn’t mine. In those days, she belonged to Methoss. I only wished she were mine.” He sucked on the pipe, bringing it back to life. “She and I met by seeking some of the same things, again and again. Till finally we got past the distrust and forged a friendship. Methoss came to be my friend as part of that. Not a very good one, mind you, but a friend all the same. As the very young count their friends. Based on similar interests, ambitions, and strength.”
“And two days ago, you killed them both.”
“True, but in those days it was a friendship. There were others that we found interests in common with, and eventually there got to be a great lot of us.” Craugh shook his head. “I think then we could have been called evil. There were too many of us, you see, to stop. We were too many and we were too powerful.”
“All of you were wizards?”
“Not all of us. Most of us, though. Others were shape-changers, were-beings, and mercenaries. We took over empires, scattered troops with our magic, and killed with impunity any who dared stand against us. I was determined to learn all I could of magic. The others, well, most of them only wanted to take over empires, destroy armies, and kill people they decided they didn’t like or people who unwisely made known that they didn’t care for them.” He paused and made a fist, like he was grasping something. Magical sparks flickered between his fingers. “But I wanted the very
heart
of magic.”
Listening to the raptness in Craugh’s voice, Juhg knew that ambition was not far from the wizard’s mind even now. “This was before the Cataclysm.”
“This,” Craugh whispered, “was before Lord Kharrion. And we’ll talk about him and his part in this as we go along. After years of roaming the world together, we found out about
The Book of Time.
You see, we had been gathering magic items the whole time. Some we stole and others we destroyed. But
The Book of Time
was special. Even the name was enough to spark our interest. It sounded like a name that could conjure great magic.” He drew on the pipe and released a slow cloud of rolling smoke. “Do you even know what
The Book of Time
can do, apprentice?”
Watching the wizard’s face in the shadows, Juhg could see the excitement, and he could hear it in Craugh’s voice. Part of the wizard had not come far from those days. Sometimes—in fact, maybe most of the time—when Craugh had accompanied the Grandmagister on his quests for lost books and knowledge, the wizard had his own agenda.
“No,” Juhg whispered. “I don’t know what it can do.”
“Once you gain possession of
The Book of Time
and learn its secrets,” Craugh said, “you can alter the very fabric of time. You can go backward and forward in time. You can pick out a moment in time and save or take a
life. You can change one incident and affect a future. You could affect a single man, or control the destiny of a nation. The man who controlled The
Book of Time,
why, he’d be the most powerful man in the world.” He smiled.
“You wanted to be that man,” Juhg said.
The wizard’s smile faded. “Yes. More than anything in the world.” He held out a bony hand. “Can you imagine what it must be like? To hold so much in the palm of your hand?”
“No. I would never want that kind of responsibility.”
“Ah, but you’re looking at it wrong, apprentice. I didn’t see possession of
The Book of Time
as responsibility. I saw it only as opportunity.” Craugh took his pipe from his mouth and aimed the stern at Juhg. “Just as you saw the chance to give back to the masses the books in the Library as opportunity.”
“How do you think I meant them to benefit me?” Juhg was incensed.
“Perhaps to assuage your guilt over the fact that you lived through the goblinkin slave mines and your family did not,” Craugh suggested.
“You lie!”
“A guess, apprentice, that is all that I offer. And possibly you wanted to be the one to give the books back to the world so that you could be an important person.”
“You’re wrong.”
Craugh nodded. “I know that I am. I know you, apprentice. And I heard your impassioned speech by the ruins of the Vault of All Known Knowledge. You wanted only to free the books once more so that all of the world could benefit from them.”
Juhg’s cheeks burned. Saying it out loud like that, or maybe it was just because it came from Craugh, made him sound foolish.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” Craugh said quietly. “That’s a noble dream. Wick hasn’t yet experienced that one. He’s been protecting the books far, far too long. Until the Library was destroyed, he could conceive of the books being in no one else’s hands. They were his responsibility.”
“They still are.” Juhg didn’t like the way Craugh’s interpretation made it sound like the Grandmagister was no longer going to be able to care for the surviving books.
Waves lapped at the ship sitting idle in the ocean. The wind had changed
direction again and the cold spray carried now and again across the ship’s bow. The darkness surrounding them made the chill seem colder.
“Where did you learn about
The Book of Time?”
Juhg asked.
“From the Gatekeeper,” Craugh said.
Blood of Bad Blood
“
T
he Gatekeeper?” Juhg echoed. “The Gatekeeper of the In-Betweenness? But surely that is a myth.”
“After everything you’ve seen, apprentice, do you yet believe there are myths that don’t at least have a root or two in truth?” Craugh shook his head. His gray hair blew. Far off, lightning flared out over the coast hidden by the night and the fog, and the sudden light flickered in his green eyes. “The Gatekeeper is real. To an extent.”
“And he truly separates the world of the living from the world of the dead?” Juhg asked.
“Yes. Just as he separates the past from the present, and allows the future to trickle through in small doses rather than a deluge. His power is the only thing that separates
now
and
then. The Book of Time
was an aid he built to help him manage those things.” Craugh shrugged. “And perhaps the book was a conceit as well.”
“A conceit?”
Craugh smiled sadly. “Do you truly think a being as powerful as the Gatekeeper needs a book to help him keep his hand on the tiller?” He shook his head. “No, he only created the book because he wished the possibility
to exist that one day someone might read it and know everything he had done. The Gatekeeper is vain.”
Juhg thought about that. Many writers of the histories, sciences, and other discussions—including even the romances in Hralbomm’s Wing that the Grandmagister had so enjoyed—were propelled by ego rather than a true desire to inform or entertain. The books were indulgences, made by people who created time in their lives to write them. Still, so many great things came out of their efforts.
“Unfortunately, being the Gatekeeper,” Craugh went on, “he wrote
The Book of Time
showing the past, the present, and the future. All of them. He lives in a place between life and death, between past and future, and outside of present.”
“Even now?”
“Yes. Even now. He tried to stop us from taking the book. We tried to kill him. Neither side was successful.” Craugh relit his pipe and smoke plumed above his head. He carefully avoided Juhg’s gaze.
Almost unconsciously, Juhg slipped his journal into his lap, took out a fresh charcoal, and began capturing the wizard’s image to the page. His hands moved slowly, long strokes that brought the image to life.
“We found the Gatekeeper through careful searching as well as happenstance,” Craugh went on. “We’d searched for years. Some of us had died during that time. Some from old age or sickness. Some at the swords of enemies.” He paused, lost in memories. “And some of us died at each others’ hands. None of us knew true loyalty. Some would say I have never learned it and that is why I am so often found alone.”
Remembering how quickly the wizard had dispatched his old “friends,” Juhg agreed. “Where was the Gatekeeper?”
“High up in the windswept peaks in the Iron Needles. At least, that was where we found the door that led us to him.”
Juhg moved on from Craugh’s image and began sketching the Iron Needles, the mountains that crawled up from Bajoram’s Pots of Flaming Pain. There were books
—had been books,
Juhg told himself—of explorers who had gone up into the Iron Needles, but not many of them had survived. The air couldn’t be breathed and ferocious birds and creatures that hunted each other—when humans, elves, and dwarves weren’t handy—lived all over the mountains.
“How did you know he was there?”
“A spell was made that tracked the Gatekeeper. We followed it up the mountain. More than half of us died in the ascent, from the lack of air, from monsters, and from greed that intensified when we thought we were near our goal. Once we encamped on top of the highest peak, it still took more than a year to find a way in to the Gatekeeper. More of us died from the bad air and the creatures that lived among the mountains. We were about to give up when Jazzal found a way into the place between worlds and time.”
“Who was Jazzal?”
Craugh’s voice thickened and he spoke with effort. “For a while I thought I loved her. But I was mistaken, of course. Or maybe I was only mistaken in thinking she loved me.”
Curiosity, stupid and dangerous curiosity, niggled at the corner of Juhg’s mind, insisting that he ask questions about the woman who had captured the wizard’s heart. Just as he was about to give in to the urge to ask, Craugh continued speaking.
“She was elven. Her hair was unruly and long, pale blue. Her eyes were smoky gray, depthless. She was more sensitive in her magic. It was she who found the crack that led us to the doorway of the Gatekeeper.” Craugh shook his head. “I could spend hours telling you of the years we spent in the In-Betweenness that lies between the worlds and time. Suffice to say that we saw things no one has ever seen before or since. We sometimes fought and killed things in one instant only to see them born in the next. Some of us were killed in those places, only to finish the journey with us and die once again upon re-entering the world that we had come from. Time had no meaning there. Nor did place. We often went to sleep in one area only to awaken in another. We could not tell how long day or night lasted. We sometimes passed through a year full of season, in any kind of order, between meals. We were often older and younger in the morning than we were when we went to bed.”
Juhg sat quietly, awed by the tale. He hadn’t studied the legends of the Gatekeeper often, but he knew about some of the details Craugh gave him.
“Time never exactly moved the way it was supposed to for any of us after we got out of the In-Betweenness,” Craugh admitted. “At least, not for those of us that made it out or didn’t die.”
“How did you find out about
The Book of Time?”
Craugh shook his head. “No one then even knew the book existed. We
went there to lay claim to the In-Betweenness. We had reasoned that such a place had to exist, and we wanted only to conquer that region and explore the potential for power there. Then, when we found the Gatekeeper, we found the book.”
“What did the Gatekeeper think of you?”
“Oh”—Craugh waved a hand—“he thought we were aberrations, of course. We existed on a level he was totally unaccustomed to. For a long time, he didn’t know what to do with us. Ultimately, I think that was the only thing that saved us for however long we were there.”
“Why didn’t he know what to do with you?”
“Because we were bound by time even though the worlds around us were not. That fact alone caused the Gatekeeper great consternation. He lives for balance, a … fairness, if you will. From what I saw, he never takes sides, he never influences. He merely … observes.”
“And keeps the worlds and time separate.”
“Yes.”
“What did he look like?”
Craugh shook his head. “Everyone that you ask, apprentice, who lived through that ordeal would have a different answer. To me, he was a strong warrior, a young man in his prime, but who had ageless eyes. To me, he always comported himself with grace and dignity, though Jazzal found him to be feminine and raucous.”
“Not even the gender could be agreed upon?” Juhg was surprised. He was also surprised at how much the wizard’s tale had pulled him into its thrall. The events were beyond his ken to a degree, but he found images flying from his mind to his fingers, defined by swift strokes of the charcoal across the pages of his journal.
“No.”
“How did you find out about
The Book of Time?”
“I don’t know. That remains a mystery, you see.”
“I don’t understand.”
“After we met the Gatekeeper, maybe even before, or maybe by the time we came to recognize
The Book of Time
for what it is, it was as though we’d always known about it. The power, however, was surprising.”
“Why would the Gatekeeper put the power to affect all of time and the distance between worlds into a book?”
“I don’t believe he meant to. It was just something that happened because
of the nature of the book. Sometimes, apprentice, magic enters into an object unintentionally. Places tend to have magic all their own, but objects acquire it through exposure or intent.
The Book of Time
is part of the Gatekeeper. As much as the eye that Hallekk keeps in his captain’s quarters is still a part of the monster that took Captain Peggie’s leg.”
“You and your friends stole
The Book of Time?”
Craugh nodded toward Juhg’s journal.
“Friends
is not a word you should use when you write about this, apprentice. Call them acquaintances. Better yet, call them accomplices, for that was all we truly were for each other in the end.” He paused to take a sip of wine. “And yes, we took
The Book of Time.
For all I know, we would have stayed there with the Gatekeeper for all of eternity. Every occasion we talked with him, he showed no sign of noticing that time had passed. I think that we went a little insane then, too.”
“Why?”
“We must have. Even though the world around us was mercurial, our minds were not. At times, we could go out into the Gatekeeper’s garden and watch flowers blossom. They would open into the sun in a matter of heartbeats, then die and drop off before you could touch one of them. At other times, they blossomed backward, the flowers furling and twisting themselves back into buds. Still others seemed frozen into a single moment, never changing. A year’s worth of seasons vanished in the space of a drawn breath. Staying there was out of the question. We were tempting madness. We took the book and ran.”
“How did you get the book?”
“We took it from his study.”
“While he was away? The Gatekeeper left the book unguarded?”
Leaning back against the ship’s railing, Craugh sighed. “There are so many inconsistencies with what you just said, apprentice.”
“What inconsistencies?”
“First of all, the Gatekeeper was never away. Yet, at the same time, he was always gone.”
“I don’t understand.” Juhg felt thickheaded and perplexed.
“When time and place don’t exist, all things are possible and impossible at once.”
“If he was never gone, how did you steal the book?”
“Because he was always gone as well.”
This line of thinking made Juhg’s head hurt.
“Think upon this, apprentice. You see the stars in the sky.” Craugh pointed upward.
Struggling to understand, Juhg looked up and glimpsed the stars between the masts, sails, and rigging.
“Those stars occupy a place outside this world. But where does that place end? Or does it not end?”
“Tupulok wrote about the vastness of the Starry Expanse in his philosophies,
Away from the Mortal Coils of Flesh, or Unleashing the Power of Thought.
You’re familiar with him?”
“Of course. Mathematician, scholar, and king.”
“Tupulok believed that the Starry Expanse was somehow twisted, so that it met itself, and so that the inside was the outside and vice versa.”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know. I know that if the Starry Expanse ends somewhere, then there must be something that exists outside of it. Then, reaching the end of that, something else must then occupy the space beyond.”
“And on and on again.”
Juhg blew out a breath. He hated thinking about the Starry Expanse and what it could mean. Too much was uncertain, and the whole existence of the idea of limitless area was almost impossible to think about.
“With that before you,” Craugh said patiently, “then you can imagine that the Gatekeeper was there and not there at the same time. Just as we escaped and didn’t escape all at once. We fled, those of us that could, and we managed to escape back into this world.”
“With
The Book of Time?”
“Yes.”
“Did the Gatekeeper come after you?”
“He tried, but in the end he could not.”
“Why?”
“Because he can’t exist beyond the In-Betweenness. If he left that place, he would die. Or never be born. We were never sure how that worked. He tried to come after us, but he could not span the barrier.”
“But you had
The Book of Time
.”
“We did. And even though we were near death and madness, or perhaps because of it, we fought. Finally, after days of battle with magic as
well as weapons, nine of us stumbled from the Iron Needles.” Craugh paused. “One of them was my son.”
“Your son?”
Craugh’s voice tightened. “Born to Jazzal while we were exploring the In-Betweenness.”
“How could a baby survive such a thing?”
“He didn’t. He walked from the In-Betweenness as we did, and he was a fully grown man when he did it.” Craugh looked at Juhg. “Time flowed differently over there, as I have said. He grew up with us, and he grew up without us. To remain alive and sane, he concentrated only on himself, coming to believe that he was the center of all that was.” The wizard was silent for a time. “Perhaps he was. None of us had time or wanted to take time to care for a child. Jazzal named him Chrion.”

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